I Write Like

Oh my God so I found this app? website? on R's blog that analyzes your writing and compares it with famous writers so you can check with whom your writing style is similar. Here're my results:

And finally, the one that made my day, that made me jump from my chair and kiss the ground - not really, but I would have if I had gotten more than 4 hours of sleep last night - is:

I feel like crying, really. H.P. Lovecraft and James Joyce are enough to make me happy but Anne Rice? I feel that I've fulfilled my purpose on earth. :')

Laura

was her name and she once had flowers

growing out of her hair –

they were usually blue flowers, because

she was always feeling blue

but that was when he was still around.

that was when he still called her darling and they

went for walks and watched movies but they didn’t really

because they were too busy making out.

that was yesterday

and yesterday was a thousand billion years ago,

it was before the visigoths sacked rome and

before the dinosaurs and the neanderthals.

yesterday was a thousand billion years

before the big bang

or was it after?

she didn’t know, couldn’t remember anymore

because when he left, he took away everything

she ever was and ever will be.

she didn’t even feel blue anymore because

she never feels anything anymore. 

I'm Back!

I know I haven't been posting much lately but I've been swamped with the SBC paper. So, these are what I've been up to lately. Well, before the paper, anyway. :)

Chilling by the pool with George Orwell and Oreos.

Chilling in Starbucks after college. And I finally found Truman Capote's In Cold Blood! So happy.

Fish tortilla with salsa and parmesan cheese and yogurt caper spread. Tastes super.

Went for Indian food with Yianthin, Wenjuin, Yanying and Shuenwen. Apparently this is an Indian pizza and you can probably see from the picture that it's fantabulous.

Indian desserts! They all taste heavenly. The only name I remember is the coconut burfi but the others are awesome too and arghhhhhh, I wanna wanna. Wenjuin, be prepared to be dragged there again.

Down the Rabbit Hole

This is one of those nights when you wake up groggy and disoriented and everything seems so distant and faraway and you find that you’re in the midst of giants. Your entire head vibrates excruciatingly as their thunderous footsteps make contact with the ground, one after the other, and the nerves in your temples are throbbing so vigorously it’s a wonder they didn’t explode into a mess of blood and capillaries. The giants are all around you, talking and laughing and occasionally one steps over you delicately - but other than that they do not seem to notice you. You’re watching them with disinterest until one of them leans down and grabs your shoulders and shakes. Hard.

“Alice,” the giantess shouts, “Alice, get up.”

I blink once. Twice. And my eyes begin to focus on the face inches from mine, her eyes wide with – what, fear? – for that few seconds until it is apparent that I have not overdosed and am still very much alive, thank you very much.

“Tara,” I croak, “water. Please.” I’m still lying pathetically on the floor – which pretty much explains the roomful of giants.  

“Jesus Christ, Alice, are you trying to kill yourself? How many goddamn pills did you do?”

Tara licks her red, red lips, livid; and I want to tell her. I want to tell her that I went to this place called Wonderland and by God, it wasn’t called Wonderland for nothing. There were all sorts of magnificent creatures – gryphons and unicorns and even mock turtles (which according to the Queen is what mock turtle soup is made from). I want to tell her that it was a place where animals talked, like in Narnia, and they sang rhymes and had the most outrageous croquet games. I want to tell her that there was a Queen of Hearts, who was pudgy and rather stout but oh, how she loved having people’s heads cut off. “Off with his head,” she would say, “off with his head” because she liked the way it sounded, “off with his head” because she can.

I could stay there forever because they were all mad. Everyone was mad and no one cared that monsters live behind my blue irises and my teeth were stained with blood. The Duchess served me soup with too much pepper and put a baby in my arms who turned into a pig. I didn’t want a pig any more than I wanted a baby so I slaughtered it and made a pork pie. Everyone at the tea party enjoyed it and the Mad Hatter pulled me aside and told me it was the best he had ever eaten and he kissed me but his mouth was full of porcelain chips and they cut into my lips and my tongue. He tasted like pork and hats and madness. 

Only the unicorn saw me for what I am. “You’re a monster,” he said, but he got into a fight with the lion over the White King’s crown and died with his flank torn into ribbons before he could warn the others.   

Oh Tara dear, I want to say, wouldn’t you have taken all those pills too if they brought you to Wonderland?

Some Words Are Just Too Sacred

/always/

is never a good word to be used

in love.

do not reassure her with words interlaced with

‘always’. she will be soothed and appear to be assuaged but

it will be a word that would come back to haunt you

like a bloodhound. it will sniff you out years later,

aroused by the dwindling affection you feel for her, the

utter dissatisfaction and insipid detachment in your relationship.

and it will devour you.

i will always love you,

will become the most fearsome boogeyman

under your bed and in your closet.

/always/

is for the use of immortals.

there are people who understand love (these are the immortals)

and there are people who vaguely grasp it, but are

too afraid or too ignorant to penetrate it

further. to delve deep into its core, and yet

never lose sight of the starting point,

to never forget what your heart might have forgotten.

and even then,

it must be a word that can only be written; it must never be spoken,

for the spoken word, even when whispered, can be devastating.

Boticelli

I can't believe I've never done a post on Sandro Botticelli before. I mean, I've been worshiping this guy on my hands and knees for years! Well no, I was exaggerating. But you get the point.

Anyway, born in Firenze - which is pretty much self-explanatory - in the 1400s he was one of the most famous painters in the early Renaissance. But ahh, influenced heavily by Savonarola he burned most of his pagan themed paintings in the Bonfire of Vanities. I can't even describe how strongly I feel against this. I mean, art is art! You can't burn good art, you akjnfjdnfrelkfmeo.

Okay, I shall stop talking about it now lest I begin to swear in a most unsightly fashion. And why am I talking like this?

The Birth of Venus

I'm not sure why The Birth of Venus, Primavera and Venus and Mars weren't burned in the Bonfire of Vanities but I intend to find out. And when I do I'll give a lecture on art history, haha.

Primavera

I would say that this is one of my all-time favorite painting, along with The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch and Caravaggio'sDavid and Goliath.

The Return of Judith to Bethulia

The Virgin and Child with Three Angels

I love how dark it is in this painting, because normally his paintings of Madonna and her Child are lighter. Like, the Divine Light shines upon them or something and they're beautiful too but I like something different. Maybe it's just me.

Calumny of Apelles

This is a large painting so you have to enlarge it and zoom in on every aspect of it. You'll see how breathtaking it is. (Find the 3200 x 2220 pixel one in wikipedia, and go over every small detail!)

1001 Arabian Nights

i sometimes wish i was born in the desert sea,

under the harsh, unforgiving glare of the sun, during

the worst of desert storms.

i dreamt of rising like a cobra from the ubiquitous sand,

with the trickle of golden grains sliding down my body.

once i was a king

but that was before caesar.

theirs are a tongue i would give anything to speak.

rich and thick and creamy like the scented cones propped

upon ancient egyptians’ heads they rolled out of their mouths

like a lullaby.

even the words smell like

za’atar and cumin and cardamom.

the evening air tastes like baharat and the waning sun.

they say that only the strongest survive

but what is never born

may never die.